


The one linked to the past

by Rogercat



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dreams, Female Harry Potter, Gen, Ghost Drifting, Ghosts, Mystery, One Shot, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Talking, meeting between the living and the dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:15:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21922768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rogercat/pseuds/Rogercat
Summary: A few months after the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry is lead to where Salazar Slytherin is buried...Christmas gift for OAC_QI, my good friend
Relationships: Harry Potter & Salazar Slytherin
Kudos: 53





	The one linked to the past

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OAC_QI](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OAC_QI/gifts).



Summer of 1998, London: 

Harry had no idea why that dream had shown up, during her sleep. But something seemed to have happened after the Battle of Hogwarts, something which had kept her awake at times because she could not forget the haunting song from the dream. It felt nothing in her scar, so there could be nothing from Voldemort, at least. 

“It is important, for some reason I can not explain…” 

This night, she had enough. Even when testing to sleep in what once had Sirius' room at 12 Grimmauld Place, the dream did not stop. Kreacher was peacefully sleeping in his den near the kitchen, and she planned to not be away for long. 

“An hour at most, hopefully…”

Dressing herself quickly, Harry sneaked out from the house she had inherited from Sirius two years ago. By using Apparition, she would arrive there and be back before dawn. 

~X~X~X~X~X~X

It was the right place, out at the sea. The old, weather-worn stone cross she had seen in the dream. And someone was already there, a older man dressed in green robes and playing a harp.

Only that it was a ghost. 

“My apologies for disturbing your sleep, Lady Potter, but I haven't been able to reach you until now. That last descendant of mine, whose magic only was renewed in power thanks to his mother marrying a non-relative...acted like a obstacle, you can say, and my power is nothing now as a ghost in contrast to when I was alive.”

He spoke Parseltongue, and the way he addressed Voldemort as…

“ _Salazar Slytherin_ ,” Harry spoke in the same language at realizing who this male ghost must be. The fourth Founder of Hogwarts nodded, stopping to play at the harp for a while. 

“I am much displeased with what happened to the House of Gaunt over the centuries, the descendants to my daughter, as my son died young without any children sired from him. I had only intended to leave Hogwarts for a short journey over the winter holidays, but Godric thought it a bad timing because I had been ill for a longer time before that. Sadly, he proved to be right, as the pneumonia had not left my lungs fully and spending time away from Hogwarts worsened it again. The muggles from a now long-gone village was kind enough to give me this resting place.”

Harry could understand what he had not said. A thousand years ago, when Hogwarts was founded and welcomed its first students, there would not have been the same medicines around the Wizarding world as here in her time. A illness that could be treated today, could have become fatal even for someone with magic. 

“And I want to apologize to you, for what my foolish descendant Tom Riddle caused to you over the years. That obsession with blood purity… I never wanted anything like that nonsense, and I married my own cousin mainly because she was sickly in health and unlikely to find another suitor, someone who would look past that she would have trouble with giving life to many children.” 

He sounded so sad when he spoke of his wife, and how the House of Gaunt had misunderstood the reason behind the cousin-marriage, believing that he had done it in order to keep the blood of the Slytherin family purely magical by not marrying a half-blood or Muggle-born as his wife. Salazar was much different than what the history books said about him, indeed. 

“You can not change my reputation, miss Potter, too many centuries have passed to make a difference, but I am glad to finally see that the House of Gaunt have come to extinction on both the male line and the female line. It is an indescribable torment to see how one's own descendants destroy themselves through inbreeding over the generations, and how the last of them have the nerve to think that he is finishing what I started.” 

Harry could only listen, feeling that all this was important for her to know, even when she alone would know this among the living. 

“Professor Slytherin. If you ever manage to pass over to the afterlife before me, please give Severus Snape a good lecture about that targeting me for everything my dad in his school years, made him my least favorite teacher, placing him right after that damned toad in my fifth year.” 

Salazar did actually laugh over what she said. 

“Had he been a student of mine a thousand years ago, I would have prevented him from teaching Portions altogether. Unusual skills in one subject does not make up for poor teaching or having a bias towards certain students.”

He began to play the harp again, and Harry saw how his burial place started to be covered in mist from the sea. Could he control the weather slightly, even in death?

“Farewell, Harry Potter. You will forever have my gratitude that my legacy was not destroyed by that fool in his quest for immortality.”

Salazar was vanishing in the mist, which Harry found so thick around her that she could not see anything. 

~X~X~X~X~X~X

When the mist eased and she could see clearly again, Harry found herself back in London, just outside 12 Grimmauld Place. She had no memory of bringing herself back, so perhaps the mist had been Salazar's way of bringing her home, using the very last of his powers. 

“I am glad to hear that you were never proud of having Voldemort as a descendant, professor.” 

It was just a such massive shame that Voldemort was unlikely to learn about how his famed ancestor saw him as a huge disappointment, trapped as he was in limbo for all eternity. 

**Author's Note:**

> in my Founders-themed background, Salazar married his first-cousin Cearo because she had difficult to find a suitor that would look past her sickly health. As far as the Wizarding world knows from history, their only children was a set of twins, with their son Rinc dying in a duel before he could marry and their daughter Sunniva was the link to House Gaunt's background of being Salazar's descendants, by the son she gave birth to after her first pregnancy, and what caused her death in childbirth


End file.
